


you're not alone

by thompsborn



Series: kids in love [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: M/M, Peter Is Struggling Okay, Post-Spider-Man: Far From Home, and hurt/comfort, and its not graphic, but only like once at the beginning, but there's a bit of fluff, harley is good at taking care of people, mild descriptions of depression and dissociation, puking, throwing up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24738058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thompsborn/pseuds/thompsborn
Summary: "You remember Harley, don't you?"“Yeah,” he tells Pepper. “Yeah, I remember Harley. Why?”“Well, I was on the phone with him the other day,” Pepper says, leaning back against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed over her chest, somehow both professional and at east, all at once. “We ended up talking about you a little bit when I mentioned coming to have dinner with you and May, and he said that, if you need to get away from the city for a while, there’s a guest room with your name on it in Rose Hill.”Confused, Peter stammers out, “Wait, so—so you’re sending me to Tennessee?"-sometimes, you find safety in the most unexpected of places
Relationships: Harley Keener & Peter Parker, Harley Keener/Peter Parker, it's pre-slash but it's there ok
Series: kids in love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1788784
Comments: 11
Kudos: 230





	you're not alone

**Author's Note:**

> this is based off the song "you're not alone" on the album kids in love by the mowgli's!! this whole series is gonna be a one shot for each song - the one shots will each be different and not based in the same universe as the others.
> 
> except for one. there will be a one shot in this series that is technically a part two for this one shot, but will be able to be read as a standalone, too.

one breath deeper than the last one

one step closer to the ones we love

you’ve been searching for the sun so long

* * *

He falls to his knees in a back alley with his lungs screaming at him, begging him to slow down.

With a shaking hand, he reaches up, tugs off his mask and gasps for air, greedy and dizzy, vision clouding over as tears gather in his eyes. Every thought in his head is scrambled and hard to decipher, a conglomeration of sound that rings in his ears and makes his stomach twist with an overwhelming wave of nausea that has him pressing a hand to the pavement to keep from toppling onto his side. The ground is damp, cold through the knees of his suit, and the air is crisp, stings his throat when he sucks it in and lets it back out in shaky, uneven sort of puffs that aren’t providing any relief to the ache.

Everyone knows. Everyone—all of them, all of them know—

His eyes squeeze shut as bile rises in the back of his throat. Everything he’s done, every decision he’s made, every lie to keep his identity a secret, has been to avoid this—to avoid becoming the reason the people he loves are in danger. Now, people know. Now, they can target May, can target Ned or MJ or anyone at Midtown, just to try and get to him. To Spider-Man. Peter Parker. His fault.

“Oh, god,” he groans, presses his palm into the concrete with enough strength to make it crack beneath his fingertips, his other hand curling around his stomach to try and ease the way his insides seem to be twisting and aching and crying out in pain. There’s an endless trembling that wracks his body with small convulsions, his muscles all tightly wound and his teeth grinding together, jaw clenching and unclenching as he tries to ride the wave of the panic that washes over him. It feels, somehow, cold and hot, all at once, like a twisting concoction tornado swirling around inside of him, making the dizziness worse, the nausea bubbling higher in his throat, until he’s spitting bile and stomach acid onto the pavement beneath him.

He never should have trusted Beck. It’s so obvious now, that simple little fact. He shouldn’t trust anyone else, anyone new. The few people he has, that’s all he’s got. All he’ll ever get. And now, those few people are at risk because he trusted a maniac with Stark technology that Peter voluntarily gave him.

And now, it’s come to bite him in the ass, every mistake he’s ever made brought to the surface, to the public eye, because, even from the dead, Beck managed to have the final word.

Everyone knows who he is, and he knows, now, that nothing will ever be the same.

Stark Industries—lead by Pepper, of course—uses the footage from the Edith glasses to clear Peter’s name, disproving Mysterio’s claim that Spider-Man is a murderous villain. There are protests all across the city when the case is closed and he’s deemed innocent, but there’s a public celebration, too, that he purposefully avoids and only sees pictures of online. A lot of people still think he’s a hero.

Peter can’t sleep anymore.

He does, a bit—enough to semi-function, anyway, but more than a few hours a night is a miracle in itself. If those hours are free of nightmares, he considers himself blessed in a way he doesn’t deserve to be.

May goes to work, even when Peter begs her not to because the hospital she works at was leaked online and there are people who protest outside of it now, just waiting for her to show her face. She pushes his head back and presses a kiss to his forehead like he’s still just a little kid, tells him, in a gentle sort of voice, that she’s been going in through a door in the back of the building to prevent those protestors bothering her. Still, Peter insists, and when he does, she pulls back and gives him a stern look, says, tone a bit less gentle, “You put your life on the line to save people, Peter. I never tried to stop you.”

And he understands that, he does—because she’s right. Spider-Man is not a nurse, and being a nurse isn’t the same as being Spider-Man, but there’s a similar premise. They save lives, both of them do, and it’s something they pride themselves in, and May hadn’t tried to make him give it up when she found out the truth. She had been quiet, almost stoic, at first, sitting on the sofa with her clasped hands pressed to the firm line of her lips, elbows resting on bouncing knees, almost restless in the subtle ways she moved but otherwise entirely too still. There had been a shine of tears in her eyes and her breath had been shaky and uneven, but she sat and she listened as Peter explained everything—the bite, the realization, the responsibility that only grew stronger after losing Ben—everything. And when he was done, she had slowly nodded her head and laid out her rules—curfew, making sure his grades didn’t drop, never lying about an injury—and she had called Tony an hour later to iron things out with him, too.

But, there’s a difference here, because this isn’t fighting a mugger to save an innocent life. This is May having to fight through a crowd of people that could try to hurt her specifically because they hate him.

“Please,” Peter tries again, a final attempt, voice hushed and wavering. _“Please,_ May.”

May’s smile is thin and almost sympathetic, but still she shakes her head. “I’ll be home for dinner.”

It’s summer, which means that Ned and MJ come over a lot, just to lounge around in the living room and eat a crap load of snacks while watching movies, and it’s nice, their attempts to keep his mind off of it, off of everything, but he still fiddles with his phone and checks Twitter for any new hashtags trending in New York that have his name. No one says it, but it’s clear that Peter isn’t really allowed to leave the apartment until things calm down. He’ll get jumped by people who want to see him behind bars, and, sure, he could easily fight them all off, but the problem is that everyone knows he wouldn’t.

Pepper comes to visit him and May, when she has business in the city, which she very often does. She’ll knock on their apartment door early in the morning and smile when Peter greets her, ask if he’s okay with babysitting for a few hours and leaving Morgan in his care when he inevitably says yes. He has nothing better to do, after all, and he adores Morgan, even if it hurts when he can spot pieces of Tony in her eyes, in the way she talks and moves and acts. If anything, it’s a bitter sort of sweet.

Days turns to weeks turns to a month. Protests are not as regular, but they’re still there. Public opinion on him is split, and it’s still not safe for him to leave his apartment.

He still doesn’t sleep.

“Pack a bag,” Pepper tells him.

Peter blinks, slow and confused, his hand still on the door knob. “What?”

Stepping around him to make her way into the apartment, Pepper quickly explains, “You’ve been stuck in here for way too long, Peter. You need to get out of here, alright? Get some air. Some _fresh_ air.”

“Uh.” Peter closes the door with a frown, instinctively flips the lock into place. “I don’t—where?”

“You remember Harley, don’t you?”

Harley—as in, Harley Keener, the other teenage boy that had been at Tony’s funeral, standing in the back by himself and keeping himself separate from everyone else. Peter remembers him, for sure, because he had approached him at some point, confused about who he was and concerned about why he was alone, and they ended up talking, and somehow that lead to talking a walk down a path in the wooded area surrounding the Stark’s lake house and chatting for what felt like hours. Harley’s been texting him since this whole thing went down—not about what’s going on, hasn’t once asked if that Mysterio said is true, but rather spams him with memes that he finds funny, jokes that he thinks of, and random pictures that he takes, sometimes of animals around his town, sometimes of the sunset, sometimes of his backyard.

Peter’s not sure what to classify them as. They don’t feel like friends, but he always smiles when they talk, even on days when smiling takes more effort than it ever, ever should Though, maybe, if things were a bit different, friends wouldn’t seem like such a hard word. As it is, more people—trusting them, being near them, talking to them—it's hard. Beck seemed like a quick friend, too. But Harley is not like Quintin Beck. Tony trusted Harley, before he died. Pepper still trusts Harley. That has to count for something..

“Yeah,” he tells Pepper. “Yeah, I remember Harley. Why?”

“Well, I was on the phone with him the other day,” Pepper says, leaning back against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed over her chest, somehow both professional and at east, all at once. “We ended up talking about you a little bit when I mentioned coming to have dinner with you and May, and he said that, if you need to get away from the city for a while, there’s a guest room with your name on it in Rose Hill.”

Confused, Peter stammers out, “Wait, so—so you’re sending me to Tennessee? Just, like—without asking if I’m okay with it, or talking to May, or—”

Pepper raises a hand, brows high, and interrupts with, “I did talk to May, actually. There’s a reason I’m here now when Harley and I talked about this days ago. May and I have been discussing if it’s a good idea or not, and we both decided that you’ve been cooped up in this apartment for so long that it’s starting to affect your mental health. You need to get out and do something, but, until we can be sure that people on the streets won’t attack you or something, New York isn’t an option. So, since Harley offered a room, May and I think you should take it. You don’t have to stay long, but we want you to try and stay for at least a week, just to see how it helps and give you time to clear your head for a bit, you know?”

“Okay, but what if I don’t want to go?”

Pepper lowers her hand, sets it on the counter. “Give it a shot, Peter. That’s all we’re asking.”

For a long moment, Peter just looks at her, conflicted. Sure, he wants to get out of the apartment and do something, go to the movies with his friends, go on patrol in his suit, but this feels like too much. Him and Harley may text pretty often, but it’s only surface level stuff. They don’t really know each other, like, at all, and now they want him to go stay with this virtual stranger for at least a week?

He doesn’t want to do it, really. It feels… overwhelming, in a weird sort of way. He wants things to go back to how they were, before Beck, before his identity was public knowledge. But, he supposes, that’s not possible, and he knows how worried May is about him being holed up in the apartment 24/7.

“Fine,” he says, because, if anything, he’ll just spend a week awkwardly making conversation with someone he kind of gets along with, and then he can come right back home.

Pepper grins, like she’s won the lottery or something. “Great! The jet will be ready in two hours.”

The flight is two and half hours long and Peter tries to sleep through it because there’s nothing else to do with no one else on the jet with him and he doesn’t like to think about the fact that he’s on a plane in the first place, but he winds up curling in a ball in one of the too fancy seats and staring—first out of the window, then into empty space next to him when watching the clouds makes his stomach curl. The two and a half hours seem to drag on for years, yet also goes by in the blink of an eye.

When the jet touches down, the entire thing lurches. Peter swallows what might be bile.

His week away from the apartment starts now.

Harley is a bit tanner than he was at the funeral, stands taller, without the grief and the sadness weighing down his shoulders as prominently as before. He greets Peter with a big grin and a chipper sort of greeting that’s tinged with a bit of an accent that Peter can’t remember hearing before. His hair falls down to his ears in wispy golden ringlets that seem to glow bright under the sunlight. He looks _warm,_ like the human definitely of kindness and caring and Peter wants to trust him when he says, “You’ll be safe here.”

“Sure,” is what Peter ends up saying, shouldering his bag and shrugging a bit.

Head tilting to the side, Harley tells him, “You are. Rose Hill is too small and usually not up to date with the news, so no one will recognize you. Even if someone did, think of this place as the town from the Hannah Montana movie that promised to keep her identity safe. No worries.”

Peter still does not believe him—being safe is not really a thing anymore, not for him, anyway. There’s no such thing as being safe, being comfortable, being happy. His life has been one tragedy after another, a fuck up here and a traumatic experience there. Good things are hard to come by, and he’s sure he’s already come by all of his and lost them all somewhere along the way. Despite that, though, he nods, not wanting to drag the conversation on any longer, and says, “Okay.”

For a moment, Harley looks at him, brows a bit pinched and lips twitching at the ends. He doesn’t push it, though, which Peter appreciates—just like he appreciates the fact that Harley hasn’t been asking him about the Mysterio situation over texts, instead acting like everything is, somehow, completely normal.

Normalcy is relative, though. Peter knows better than to find comfort in nothing.

“I have a feeling,” Harley says to him, two days into this little get away, leaning against the doorway of the guest room with dirt smudged on the knees of his jeans and his hands and even the curve of his cheek, “that this isn’t what Pepper was hopin’ for when she asked you to come here. Like, pretty sure the whole reason behind you flyin’ your ass to Rose Hill was to stop having you hole yourself up in your house, not to just hole yourself up in _my_ house instead.”

Peter is curled up on his side on the guest bed, which is somehow a perfect balance between soft and firm, taking to the shape of his body and supporting it in a way that reminds him of a warm embrace. He can’t quite place the last time he’s had a warm embrace, or any embrace at all—hugs used to be second nature to him, but after Beck and his illusions, touch feels more sacred and important, and now it’s hard to trust much of anything, let alone his own ability to handle any sort of affection that he very clearly does not deserve. Maybe that’s why he’s finding it nearly impossible to drag himself out of the bed.

Harley waits for a long moment, clearly expecting the get a response of some sort, but Peter’s too busy staring absently at the wall beside Harley’s head inside. With a small sigh, Harley pushes off the door frame and crosses the room, heavy foot fall making Peter flinch lightly at every step he takes, and suddenly the entire area is lit up with natural light as Harley tugs the curtains open and lets the sun beams stream in. Peter doesn’t mean to sound like a wounded animal, but the sound claws its way out of the back of his throat without his consent as he turns his head and buries it into the pillows. “C’mon, Parker,” Harley says, now standing at the foot of the bed with his hands propped on his hips. “I’m pretty damn sure you haven’t left this room since you got here, and Pep will chew my ass out if I let you spend your entire trip wallowing away until you become a sad, lonely mummy. Up and at ‘em!”

For another long moment, Peter doesn’t reply. It feels like his vocal chords aren’t willing to work with him, like his throat is closing up and barely letting air come in and out. It takes him a few minutes to swallow down the bad feeling in his chest, and even then, his voice is hoarse and grating when he finally manages to part his chapped lips and tell Harley, “I’m fine.”

“Believe it or not,” Harley tells him, “I’m well aware of what it looks like when someone is depressed. I also know a few tricks to get you back on your feet. Which means that you—” he leans over, claps a hand on Peter’s shoulder and shakes him, and the touch makes fire burn beneath Peter’s skin, “—need to get dressed. Nothin’ too heavy, nothin’ fancy, alright? We’re gettin’ some gardening done today. Mama’s been off on work trips ever since she got her new job, and she’s gonna be home in about three weeks. Gotta make sure the house and the yard is perfect for when she gets back, and I can’t make it perfect and keep an eye on you if you’re locked up in the guest room. So, you’re gonna shower, and then you’re gonna meet me downstairs in a pair of jeans and a light shirt. If you need to borrow anything, let me know, alright?”

Peter turns his head, squints through the sunlight to see the determined look gleaming in Harley’s blue eyes, his brow furrowed and his stance almost stern. “Do I have a choice about this?”

“Not really. You got twenty minutes before I come back in here and drag you outside myself.”

“But—”

Before Peter can properly respond, Harley is striding out of the room, calling out a, “Twenty minutes!” over his shoulder as he goes, pulling the door shut behind him and leaving Peter alone once again.

He considers not getting up, considers testing out if Harley will follow through with the threat to drag Peter outside is he doesn’t cooperate, but he’s too tired—heavy in his bones and cloudy in the head—to put up much of a fight. If slugging his way through some gardening is all he has to do to get Harley to leave him alone for the rest of the week, then that’s just what he’s gonna do to get it over with.

Soon enough, he’ll be back at home, anyway. What he does while he’s here won’t matter then.

The sun feels different in Tennessee than it does in New York.

“It’s weird, right?” Harley says, on his knees in the dirt and pulling up weeds. Peter is a few feet away, easily pulling up weeds as well, his strength making it so he can’t really feel any resistance as he grabs and tugs. Harley flashes him a grin that seems to spell gratitude and some tint of being impressed, but he doesn’t mention it, so he keep talking instead. “I’ve only been to New York a couple of times, usually in the summer, but it’s a completely different kind of heat. Which, like, from a scientific and logical standpoint, I can easily understand and explain why that is, but that doesn’t make feeling that difference any weirder, you know? Knowing it and then feeling it are two very different things.”

Peter hums, the sound somewhere in the middle of his throat, not high and pitchy, but not a low rumble, either. Disinterested, almost, but not out of a place of boredom or anything, but from a place of… not really being there. It happens, sometimes. He doesn’t always feel like he’s in his own brain.

Harley keeps trying to spark up conversation, says little facts and tells stories, talks about his sister, Ollie, and how she’s away at summer camp for the first time ever because it’s something their family can finally afford. Peter wants to be engaged, if only because Harley is genuinely kind to him and seems worried in a way that’s hard to really pinpoint, but he can’t bring himself to do more than nod sometimes, make noncommittal noises that very clearly fall flat as he keeps pulling weeds. Eventually, Harley goes quiet, and they work together in silence, until, what could be minutes or what could be hours later, Harley leans back on his haunches, claps his hands together to shake off some of the loose dirt sticking to his skin and then looks at Peter with lowers brows and a small frown. “You’re not really here, are ya’?”

It takes a moment for Peter to comprehend that those words are directed at him, then another moment to really process what the words really mean. He pulls a weed and says, “I’m here.”

“Physically,” Harley nods. “But your head is somewhere else, isn’t it?”

Peter shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Look at me, Peter,” Harley instructs, and, after a minute, Peter does. He feels vaguely confused as Harley scans over his features, his frown deepening at whatever he finds there. It makes Peter shift where he’s kneeling on the ground, knees buried in the dirt and the gravel, pebbles digging into his skin uncomfortably. “Alright,” Harley eventually says, reaches over for a stained rag to properly wipe the dirt off of his hands, and then hands it to Peter, who is slow to accept it and do the same. “That’s enough of gardenin’ for today, I think. You haven’t eaten much since you got here. Wanna help with dinner?”

“Uh…” Peter trails off. He means to provide an answer, but he quickly realizes that he’s already seemed to forget the question and wouldn’t know how to give a proper response in the first place.

Harley must sense this, because he clambers to his feet and hold his hand out. “Come on, then.”

The first bite is bland and tasteless. Peter stares down at his pasta with a sort of emptiness that resonates in his chest, but Harley reaches over, guides his hand down until his fork is poised to twist more of the noodles for a second bite. “Keep eatin’,” he says. “Trust me on this, alright?”

Peter can’t trust anymore. That much is clear. He trusts the wrong people and things go wrong and his loved ones are put into danger and it’s all his fault. All because someone with warm eyes looked at him, seemed to really _see_ him, told him that how he felt was okay, asked for his trust and then Peter _gave it._

There must be panic in his eyes when he looks at Harley again, because his hand pulls back from Peter’s instantly, both hands going in the air and features earnest. “Tony trusted me,” he says, speaks a bit slowly and carefully. “He told you that, remember? You said somethin’ about it when we met, how he told you about me, said somethin’ about trustin’ a twelve year old dumbass to help him stop a terrorist. He trusted me, Peter, and you know that he did. You know that you can trust me, too. I _know_ that you know it.”

Part of Peter—most of him, really, all the fractured bits and the shattered pieces and the torn apart shreds scattered around the empty cavern of his chest—seems to _scream_ at him, pleads and beds and shouts that Harley can’t be trusted, that he’s full of lies and trying to trick him, trying to earn his trust and manipulate him, just like Beck did. Part of him, though—the smaller part, the little bits that are injured and bruised and hurt, but still whole—they whisper reassurances, murmur memories of Tony Stark, elbow deep in the opened chest plate of an Iron Man suit and babbling about a boy from Tennessee that saved his life. Memories of the way Tony rolled his eyes and grinned when Peter laughed at the funny parts and promised to have them meet one day, claiming that they would get along like a house on fire.

“You don’t have to trust me,” Harley tells him gently. “I can tell that’s a hard thing, okay? It was poor choice of words, and I would never ask that of you. Just… take another bite, and then keep going. You need to eat, alright?” Still, Peter just stares at him, feels this war brewing on within his head of whether to be alarmed or comforted by the way that Harley’s eyes glimmer under the kitchen lights. “Pepper told me some stuff, before you flew down here, and one of the things was that you need to eat more to keep your super metabolism happy, right? You’ve barely eaten a damn thing since you got here. You _have_ to eat.”

There are a lot of things that Peter has to do, it seems. He looks back down at his bowl of pasta and raises a second bite to his lips and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to comprehend the thoughts in his head.

The next morning, Harley wakes Peter up and they finish the gardening by lunch time. Peter is feeling cloudy and not all that present, loses himself in the motion of pulling weeds and helping plant new seeds and transferring plants from the pot and into the earth. It’s easy, not thinking, just doing. It’s kind of nice.

For lunch, Harley teaches Peter the best way to make a quesadilla, points a fork at Peter with raised brows and tells him, “Any other way is horse shit, Parker. This is the best of the best, alright? Pay attention.”

(The first bite is like ash, but Peter keeps eating. Eventually, his brain starts to clear enough for him to really taste it, and he finds that it tastes pretty damn good. Harley seems both smug and relieved when Peter is able to make his tongue cooperate with him well enough to form the words and tells him that.)

That afternoon, Peter helps with deep cleaning the living room, the kitchen, the stairs, the hall. Everywhere other than the bedrooms, he finds himself with a magic eraser scrubbing scuff marks off the walls and wiping down counter tops and using a wet vac to take stains out of the carpet. Spring cleaning, Harley says, because his family didn’t have time to do it in the spring. Peter is used to spring cleaning the apartment with May, so it’s easy to fall into this work, too, doesn’t need to think to clean.

Once they’re done, it’s well past dinner time. Harley slides a take out menu across the counter and tells Peter, “We’ve only got one place in Rose Hill that delivers, but I don’t really feel up to cookin’ right now. Do you?” When Peter shakes his head, Harley nods at the menu and says, “Pep promised to cover any food expenses while you’re here, so feel free to pick whatever you want and I’ll call it in.”

They eat take out on the freshly cleaned couch, Peter clad in a pair of the sweatpants he brought from home and one of Uncle Ben’s old sweatshirts that he didn’t even realize he packed. Harley’s got on flannel pajama pants and a dark grey jacket zipped all the way up, and they put on a movie that Peter doesn’t really watch, just looks at the screen and can’t figure out why he isn’t processing anything that’s on it. He almost feels afraid at how blurry it seems, but even that fear is just… quiet. Not quite there.

“It’s alright,” Peter thinks he remembers Harley saying at some point. “I know how it feels.”

Peter isn’t sure if he’s feeling much of anything.

He never offers a response.

The thing is, Peter doesn’t realize he’s becoming comfortable here.

There’s a routine, after a few days. Sure, the first two days saw him locked up in the guest room and doing absolutely nothing, but now, on day six, he’s not putting up a fight to wake up, feels almost at peace as he helps Harley with any daily chores he has, learning all these things that Harley just knows how to cook. He doesn’t feel fully present for any of it, but the pieces of him that are there, that are actually processing his surroundings in any capacity, feel relaxed in this house.

On day six, though—that’s when the conversation about Peter going home comes up. They’re eating dinner at the dining table, sitting across from each other and simply enjoying the silence as they eat. Peter is sort of gazing over the room and wondering how it became so familiar so fast, when Harley clears his throat and casually says, “So, Pep said she’d have a jet ready to take you home at noon tomorrow.”

Peter’s eyes snap to Harley so suddenly that it actually aches within his skull. “What?”

Harley tilts his head slightly to the side. “She said you only wanted to come for a week, so—”

“She told me to try staying for at least a week,” Peter corrects, feeling his heart start to rise in his throat, thundering heavily. New York is home, he knows that, but, suddenly, the idea of going back to never leaving his apartment because the city is still warring over whether to love him or hate him is suffocating, overwhelming him with something harsh and dizzying. “She hasn’t asked me if I wanted to go home yet. She hasn’t—hasn’t talked to me at all, so—so why the hell is she—why is she—”

“Okay, let’s—” Harley drops his fork and holds up his hands. “It’s fine. You can stay a little longer.”

But that doesn’t help. “A little longer? That’s it?”

Harley shifts in his seat, appearing a bit confused. “I mean, yeah. You have to go home eventually.”

And, suddenly, it seems to click in his brain.

There are a lot of things that Peter is upset about, that he is angry about. He’s furious that he’ll never be able to really remember his parents, and he’s pissed that he couldn’t save Uncle Ben, and he’s beyond livid that Tony was taken away from him, too. But, amidst all that rage, he feels a problem that he’s never really realized bubble up in his chest and choke him.

“I’m getting sick and tired,” he says, voice slow and low, “of people telling me what I have to do.”

“I don’t—” Harley stops, brows furrowed. “I don’t think I understand.”

Peter laughs, and the sound is sharp. “Of course you don’t! No one fucking understands, alright? No one gets it, and—and that’s fine. That’s _fine._ I don’t _want_ people to understand because it _sucks,_ but—but everyone that doesn’t understand keeps telling me what I have to do like they know anything about what I really need! Believe it or not, I’m not a fucking child and I’m capable of making my own fucking choices!” There’s a fire that burns within him so fiercely that he slams a hand against the table and stands, just to get out some of the energy that floods his veins. “I’m _Spider-Man,_ okay? I’m Peter Parker, and I’m Spider-Man, and I’ve seen more people die than anyone should ever have to and I’m only _seventeen years old._ I’m _traumatized_ and I’m _terrified_ and I don’t want people to making my choices for me anymore!”

For a long, drawn out moment, nothing happens. Peter pants for air after his outburst and Harley stares at him with wide eyes, looking stunned and concerned and uncertain. Then, slowly, he rises to his feet, pulls the ends of his lips up into a small smile, says, “So that’s what you’re like when you’re not in your head.”

Peter blinks, takes in a slow breath to appease his greedy lungs. “What?”

“I’ve never really met you when you’re not in your head,” Harley explains. “At the funeral, and the whole time you’ve been here, you haven’t really been here. I was the same way, after my dad came back and then left us again, so I know what it’s like, and I know there wasn’t much I could do other than try to keep you busy so you wouldn’t get too lost. But this—this is it, isn’t it? You’re not all that lost right now.”

“Oh.” Peter feels the fight leave him suddenly, and he feels, out of nowhere, exhausted. He feels angry. He feels tired, and afraid, and all of these things that he knows has always been there but is suddenly so much more apparent and present than they were before. His hands shake as he pushes fingers through his hair and lets out an uneven sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m—I didn’t mean to raise my voice like that.”

Harley laughs, the sound a bit chiming and bright. “Don’t be sorry. I was hoping this would happen. Better for ya’ to raise your voice than to let it all fester in you until you explode.”

Peter swallows roughly. “I think I’m always on the brink of exploding.”

“Then keep shouting about it,” Harley says, shrugging. “I’m all ears. Get it out.”

It sounds inviting, in a way that Peter can’t really put into words, but something else flares up in his chest and he meets Harley’s eyes—deep blue and earnest and kind—and he slowly says, “I don’t trust you.”

What looks like an inkling of hurt swirls in with everything else, but Harley just nods his head once, the action curt and understanding. “That’s fine,” he says. “I told you, you don’t have to trust me, and I’m not gonna ask you to.”

“But—” Peter stops, wets his lower lip in uncertainty. “But Tony did trust you. And I want to, too. I just… I trusted Beck, you know? I trust… the wrong people, and… and things go south. And it’s all my fault, because I put my trust into someone who was more than happy to use that trust against me. I want to trust you, and—and I think part of me has to, because I feel at ease here and that never happens around people I don’t trust, but—I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m too scared to try trusting someone again.”

“Then don’t trust me,” Harley tells him simply. “You have every right to not trust people. Don’t trust me, and that’s fine. But at least hear me out when I say that no one can make your decisions for you. If you wanna stay here longer, tell Pep not to send the jet. That’s your choice to make.”

Peter falls back into his chair at the table and sighs. “I can’t. I have responsibilities.”

Harley sits back down, too, his features twisted up in disbelief. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but I really don’t think you’re in the state of mind to handle whatever responsibilities you have. I’ve watched you in a constant dissociative state for six days now, I really doubt being a superhero is a good idea right now.”

“I’m not a superhero,” Peter says, soft and a little bit sad. “And that’s not even what I mean by responsibilities. I have to make sure I’m there to keep my aunt safe, my friends, and… god…”

“Peter,” Harley says, suddenly sounding more serious than he has since Peter arrived. “You are a superhero. You know that, right? So many people would be dead if you weren’t there to save them. I’ve seen videos of what Spider-Man does, and it’s… it’s incredible. It’s amazing.”

Peter feels his brows knit together, shakes his head. “So many people are dead because of me.”

Harley scoffs in clear disbelief. “Oh, really? Like who?”

“My parents,” Peter answers, without hesitation, voice becoming a bit dull. “Uncle Ben. Jessica Anderson—she got in a car crash when I was patrolling when I was sixteen, and I didn’t get her out in time. She died when the ambulances got there. Kellen Baker—he was just walking home when I was trying to capture the Rhino, and he was—he was trampled. Couldn’t save him. Andy Wilcox, Hayden Thomas, Elijah Mills, Dallas Morrison, Jay Cross, Marcia Craig, Tami Mitchell—all before I turned seventeen. There was a couple, Marlene and Claire, that were getting assaulted by some homophobic assholes and I didn’t get there until after they got shot. I had a flashback to when my uncle died in front of me and barely managed to try and stop the bleeding until the ambulance came and still couldn’t save them. Adrian Watson. Kristopher Brock. Carlos Wagner. And—Tony. Tony, too.”

When Peter looks back up again, Harley’s features are crumpled and heartbroken, eyes shimmering with what, weirdly enough, looks like tears. It looks like he doesn’t know where to start with all of that, parting his lips and closing them again, like a fish out of water, before he sucks in a sharp breath and lets it out in a shaky exhale that seems to rattle in his chest. “Okay,” he says, a bit soft and gentle and so, so sad. “I’m not gonna tell you that you shouldn’t blame yourself for all of those people, but I know that won’t help, so I’m gonna say somethin’ else instead, okay? You—Peter Parker—” and he meets Peter’s eyes again, dead on and searing. “There will always be room in this house for you, okay? There has been ever since Tony first told me about you, and that’s not gonna change. If you want to stay longer, then you can stay as long as you want. I’m not gonna make you leave, and I’m not—I’m not gonna tell you what you have to do, or what you _should_ do, because I—I can’t pretend to know what’s best for you. But I can tell you that you never have to worry about that stuff while you’re here. I promise you that, okay?”

For a long, long time, Peter can’t figure out how to respond. His tongue feels like it’s knotted up in and refuses to cooperate in his mouth, and something in his chest cracks at the sincerity in Harley’s voice, and it dawns on him, quite suddenly—he may not want to trust anything else, but it’s too late to stop this. He trusts Harley, he really does, and maybe it’s because he actually feels—feels safe, somehow, while he’s here, that his walls start to really crack. His lower lip trembles and his eyes fill with tears and—

“You can say no,” Harley whispers, “but can I hug you?”

Touch is sacred, now, more important that it was before Beck. It’s proof of reality, and Peter often feels like he doesn’t deserve the comfort. But—without thinking, really—he nods his head and tries to get to his feet only to have his legs give out beneath him, and Harley catches him before he hits the ground, both of them slumping against the wall with Harley’s arms around him, Peter crying into his shoulder and clutching at him like a life line, afraid to let go the moment he starts to hold on.

He hasn’t properly cried since he was on the jet with Happy, after getting hit by that train.

It feels like taking a weight off his shoulders that he didn’t even realize was there.

Two weeks later, Harley’s mom comes home.

She looks like Harley, with the golden hair and the blue eyes, but her features are elegantly aged and her smile is motherly in a way that’s impossible to explain. When she steps through the door, she immediately offers Peter one of those smiles and tells him, “Harley’s been tellin’ me about you,” and she pulls him into a soft hug that he tries his best not to melt into like a touch-starved child.

Harley makes them dinner—Peter doesn’t help with this one, but he does sit on the counter and keep him company while Macy is showering upstairs. He does help in plating it, though, and sets up the table the way that Harley showed him his mom likes it. Macy looks grateful when she comes downstairs, presses a kiss to Harley’s forehead and thanks him, then does the same for Peter, even though he shakes his head sheepishly and tells her, “No, I—I didn’t help much, really.”

“How long are you plannin’ to stay?” Macy asks him as their eating dinner together, one empty seat for one Olivia Keener, who won’t be back from summer camp until the end of August—after Peter’s birthday, which he keeps forgetting is coming up in a few weeks’ time. He’ll be turning eighteen.

“Um.” Peter shrugs, looks down at his meal to avoid meeting anyone’s eyes. “I don’t know. As long as you’ll let me, I guess. New York just seems… really overwhelming, after staying here, you know?”

Macy places her hand on top of his and tells him, “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”

“Hell,” Harley says. “I say you never have to leave. I like havin’ you around.”

“I have—family. Friends. I shouldn’t—”

Harley quirks a brow at him. “Your decision,” he says simply. “Don’t let what anyone else would think stop you from doin’ what you want to do. It’s up to you, sweetheart. Nobody else.”

Peter looks at him for a moment—part of him feeling fluttery from the pet name, part of him repeating Harley’s words in his head, reminding him that it’s his choice, his choice and no one else’s, and he should choose without the influence of anyone else. Slowly, Peter smiles. “For the rest of summer,” he decides. “Maybe longer, I don’t know yet. But—definitely, _definitely_ wanna stay until then, at the very least.”

Macy glances between them with amusement in her eyes, but she squeezes Peter’s hand lightly and repeats, “However long you want. That room is all yours, alright?”

“Thank you, Miss Keener,” Peter tells her.

She clicks her tongue. “Call me Macy, hon. If you’re stayin’ under my roof, you call me by my name.”

Peter ducks his head, sheepish. “Thank you, Macy.”

She squeezes his hand another time, then pulls hers back to keep eating. Peter looks up, over at Harley, and can’t help the grin that pulls at his lips when Harley offers him a wink.

It’s the safest he’s felt in a long, long time.

* * *

you’re not alone

even when you feel

so far from home

everybody’s here

you’re not alone

screaming in the mirror, saying

i’ve been broke, out of love

but i know

we’re not alone

**Author's Note:**

> spidey-lad on tumblr!! hmu!!


End file.
